


take me to the lakeside

by meritmut



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 07:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: “You promised,” she whispers. “You promised me.”





	take me to the lakeside

**

It’s quiet under the trees. She hadn’t noticed that, the first time. Too busy running, and then too busy fighting for her life, and then—

It’s quiet, where the world stops and the wood begins.

There’s a place where the ground dips down into a rocky cleft and rises up again, where she has to scramble to keep her balance. Up above, the close-knit greenery of the forest bends inward as if to mark the place where it all began; as if to say, _here you are again._

This is where they met, she thinks.

She wouldn’t have known it, if it hadn’t been for the gully she’d had to come through. Time and memory have done their work in the intervening years and the place where the earth lies broken open is the only thing Rey remembers of her panicked flight through the wood; the way the walls of stone had risen up around her and she’d felt trapped, like this was it—this was the end, she’d gotten off Jakku only to die in the most beautiful place she’d ever seen, cornered like a rat in its nest where no one would ever find the bones she left behind.

The wood is not so different from the desert in the ways it kills you.

Rey looks around her now and fills her lungs with a breath of clear, sweet-scented air. It’s summer: everything is blooming, everything is green and lush and touched with gold, ripe at the fullest swell of life. It makes her heart ache, though not the way it used to.

Nothing feels the way it used to.

 _I’ll show you green worlds,_ the wood might be withholding its ghosts but her memory supplies them readily enough. _I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Everywhere. Rey, just say the word. We’ll go and never look back._

Even after so much time, she can still hear the way his voice had trembled.

“You promised,” she whispers. “You promised me.”

Her hands curl into fists at her side. Coming back here had been a mistake.

It hadn’t really been a conscious thing, though. Her feet had led her here, the moment she stepped down onto the surface of Takodana and closed her eyes to the rush of _life_ that came flooding over her from all around; nothing sings in the Force the way a forest does and there are notes in the song of this wood that call to her in dreams even now. She has no memory of leaving this place: maybe a part of her never has.

And—maybe it is a mistake, but it’s hardly the worst one she’s ever made.

“I miss you,” she murmurs.

Above, the trees are whispering, moved by a wind Rey cannot feel.

 _I’m with you,_ her ghost says. _Always._

He’s never lied to her. Not once.

There is a life beyond the edge of the forest: it waits for her even now. She’s holding up their departure dawdling here in her memories but she can’t help lingering just a little longer.

 _Go, Rey,_ the Force stirs around her as though nudging her on her way. _I will be with you, wherever you are._

 _Stay with me,_ Rey thinks, turning slowly toward the path that had brought her here to set off back the way she had come. _I don’t want to be alone._

The ghosts walk at her side. She can feel them, still. Feel _him_.

Keeping his promise in the only way he can.

_You’re not alone._

**

**Author's Note:**

> crosspost of an older thing


End file.
